Useful links

Shared Ownership – the context

Shared community ownership

Shared community ownership of sustainable energy assets has been adopted in some parts of the world for several years. In Denmark, for example, there is a legal obligation on developers to make 20% of their projects available for shared community ownership.

Here in the UK there have been some examples of this approach on a voluntary basis, starting with Baywind in 1996. The approach is now being rolled out more widely further to the government's:

Community Energy Strategy

The UK government published its Community Energy Strategy in January 2014, as detailed here. It included the statement that:

"We expect that by 2015 it will be the norm for communities to be offered the opportunity of some level of ownership of new, commercially developed onshore renewables projects."

To support this strategy, the government appointed a:

Shared Ownership Taskforce

The role of the Taskforce, as further described here, is to define the framework for achieving this shared community ownership objective, and to monitor its progress.